Conservation

Working Lands

Working lands represent one of the best hopes for conservation. These parcels of forests, ranches, and farms add up to roughly a billion acres—or about half the land in the entire Lower 48 states. Audubon collaborates with landowners, land managers, government agencies, and private industry across the hemisphere to increase the quality of habitat on privately managed lands to benefit 20 flagship bird species. Audubon also helps landowners and land managers apply bird-friendly practices on their lands and develop market-based solutions to build economic incentives that have the potential to engage many more landowners. And Audubon works on federal policies that substantially influence the management of land to advance large-scale solutions that benefit both landowners and the environment.

Theory of Change

We will focus on four landscapes dominated by private lands and where birds and habitat are most threatened: California’s Central Valley; the sagebrush ecosystem of the interior West; North American grasslands, including the Chihuahuan Desert; and eastern forests. Audubon will help landowners and land managers apply bird-friendly practices, and drive market-based solutions that influence ecosystem health at scale.

How to Get There

Audubon will:

Develop market-based conservation solutions that help land managers increase the profitability of their lands as they adopt bird-friendly practices.

Create land-management practices that target specific bird species and their habitat needs.

Monitor and measure responses to these land-management practices to ensure the desired conservation outcomes are achieved.